Tag: clark-college

More Than Just HTML: Helping Students Believe in Themselves

I teach web development at a community college (Clark College), but let’s be real. Code is only part of the story.

What I teach is confidence, and occasionally, how to stop rage-AI-ing “why won’t my CSS center” at 11 p.m.

Many students show up thinking they’re not “tech people.” They doubt themselves before they’ve even typed <!DOCTYPE html>. Somewhere along the way, someone told them coding is only for hoodie-wearing geniuses or teenage YouTubers building apps in their sleep. I spend most of the quarter showing them that it is nonsense.

Yes, I teach HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Git, PHP, SQL, all the classics. But I also teach you how to fail forward, debug with a rubber duck, use vibe code when the plan falls apart, and not let a missing bracket ruin your day.

We talk about AI a lot because it is not going away. My students know it will not write their code for them, not if they want to pass, but they also learn how to ask it questions, get unstuck, and use it responsibly, like a teammate who never sleeps but sometimes gives wildly wrong advice with full confidence.

My favorite moments are when a student who started the class whispering, “I don’t think I belong here,” ends up staying after to help a classmate debug a form, slice of pizza in hand, casually explaining the event.preventDefault() as if it is no big deal.

Confidence is not something they walk in with. It is something they build: one messy project, one late-night aha moment, and one pizza-fueled study session at a time.

I just hand them the tools. And the duck. They do the rest.